Thanks in advance for all the help this forum provides. I'm running a latent class analysis with a mixture analysis and using the 3-step procedure to test the latent classes' effects on an outcome variable (DU3STEP). There is some missing data in that outcome variable, so I was wondering if it would be possible to use imputation. I've got the analysis without missing data imputation working fine, but when I add:

DATA IMPUTATION: IMPUTE = variablename;

to the syntax, I get an error message that there's an "Unknown variable(s) in the IMPUTE option: variablename". The variable name is spelled correctly and introduced earlier in the USEVARIABLES and AUXILIARY lines. This problem only seems to arise for variables I try to impute for which are also in AUXILIARY.

So my question is, is it possible to impute missing values for variables used in the AUXILIARY command? Or is this just a bad idea altogether since this variable is essentially the Y in my formula? What am I doing wrong? Please be gentle, I'm a neophyte!

Thank you for your reply. I have another question within the same general topic. I successfully ran an LCA and 3-step mixture analysis with a distal outcome. I then noticed some data on the outcome was marked as missing that I actually had, so I went back into the data file and added that data back in to the existing cases.

Now when I run the LCA/3-step with this single outcome, I get all 9999's for the results estimates/means/p-values of the distal outcome section. There are no new error messages other than the note that there were "problems with the distal outcome." The only difference between before (when it worked) and now (when it doesn't) is that there are fewer missing cases in the (binary) distal outcome. Do you have any information you could share on what might be causing this, and how I could run the analysis?

Dear Drs. Muthen, I'm running a LCA together with several covariates. Some of the covariates were initially unordered categorical variables which I turn into dummies (and omitting the ref category) in order to run the LCA, using R3step. I understand that missing data on LCA is handled by FIML. However, listwise deletion is applied to the covariates. The output says that data imputation is a way that can be used for observations that are missing with respect to the covariates. How do I do that? Could you please help? Thanks This is my code. Names are year id age female income family politics child presch pre_bb bb genx mil white black other lths hs jc college married nevmarr wds sp_fulltime sp_parttime sp_notworking marrWchld marrNchld singWchld singNchld cohabWchld cohabNchld hse_others; Missing are all (-9999) ; usevariables are family politics child presch ; categorical are family politics child presch; classes = c(4); useobservations = year == 1977 ; auxiliary=(r3step) female black other lths hs jc wds married sp_fulltime sp_parttime marrNchld singWchld singNchld cohabWchld cohabNchld hse_others;